The best of the fishing being now over, Evans crossed to England, nominally to collect his kit, in reality to have a large still made, which he had packed in large cases, labelled furniture, and brought over by long sea to Ballybor. At the same time he arranged with a sugar agent in England to ship treacle in paraffin barrels to Ballyrick and Ballybor as he required it.
When at home in Wales he induced a cousin, John Evans, to join him, and the two set out for Ireland. In Dublin they purchased a Ford truck, which they had fitted up as a shooting waggonette with a hood like a boxcar, and in this, after obtaining the necessary police permit through Blake, they drove straight down to the west, and took up their quarters at Ardcumber.
They found the house in charge of an old woman, who lived in one of the gate lodges, and arranged with her to cook for them and look after the few rooms they used, allowing her to go home every evening at six o’clock.
At the top of the house they found six large rooms shut off from the rest of the house by a heavy door at the head of the stairs. Here they erected the still, using a fireplace as a flue; in a second room they erected wooden fomenting vessels, and in a third stored the treacle and poteen. In order to obtain a supply of water they fitted a pipe to the main water-supply tank, which was in the roof above the attics.
They now settled down to a regular routine of shooting by day and distilling for a greater part of the night, living entirely to themselves. Once a week they drove into Ballybor in the Ford to obtain provisions.
Whenever they learnt that a consignment of treacle had reached Ballybor or Ballyrick, they at once removed it in the Ford, stored it in the stables, which they kept carefully locked, and carried the treacle in large pails at night-time to the fermenting vessels in the attics.
At this time, so occupied were the police with looking after themselves, and the country people with keeping clear of the R.I.C. and the Volunteers, that nobody gave a thought to the “two queer foreigners above in the big house” who were mad on shooting.
As soon as they had accumulated a good supply of poteen (the Irish peasant has no fancy ideas about allowing poteen to mature, and will as soon drink it hot from the still as not), they began to think of how to dispose of it without calling unnecessary attention to themselves. In the end they decided not to try distributing the poteen themselves, but to find a reliable agent who had a good knowledge of the locality.
Even when he was very poor indeed the western peasant always insisted on having the best of tea, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he insisted on paying a high price. At one time, so great were the profits on tea, that merchants used to send carts through the country districts selling nothing but tea, called by the country people “tay carts.”
David Evans found out that the principal tea merchant for the Ballybor district—in fact, for many miles round—was a grocer called Terence O’Dowd, who kept a large shop in Ballybor, and had a branch in Ballyrick. Hearing that O’Dowd was fond of coursing, Evans called at his shop, and after buying a quantity of provisions, invited the man to bring his hounds out to Ardcumber the following Sunday for some coursing.